RDF Core WG Minutes 27 April 2001

This page summarizes the telecon for the
RDF Core Working Group
held from 1000 to 1100 EDT on 27 April 2001.
These minutes were prepared by
Mike Dean,
but have not yet been reviewed by the other participants.

Participants

Dave Beckett

Frank Boumphrey

Dan Brickley

Mike Dean

Rael Dornfest (joined late)

Jan Grant

R.V. Guha

Martyn Horner

Michael Kopchenov

Ora Lassila

Frank Manola

Brian McBride, chairing

Eric Miller

Stephen Petschulat

Aaron Swartz

Regrets received from Art Barstow, Jos De Roo, Graham Klyne,
and Renato Ianella.

Charter

Brian reviewed the
charter,
noting that backward compatibility with existing RDF is a priority.
No issues were raised with the charter,
although Frank Manola noted that the
"devil may be in the details".

Issue Discussion

The XML Namespace spec doesn't address unprefixed attributes.
We'll have to live with their bug.
RESOLVED: We'll strongly recommend the use of namespace qualified attributes,
and allow but deprecate unqualified attributes.

Ora noted that it was an original requirement for RDF that
parsing should not require knowledge of the schema.

The discussion on the latter 2 issues largely occurred in parallel and
became a more general discussion about containers.
Several people advocated deprecating container types and/or making them
a separate module
(this also applies to reification).

It also brought out several larger issues:

RDF Syntax vs. Model

We should record more of the history behind various RDF issues.

What is the real-world use of containers and other RDF features?
What will break if we change stuff?
ACTION (everyone): send RDF feature usage information from
real-world applications you know of to Guha, who will collect it.

Modularization can be accomplished via namespaces or documents.

Redefinition of the RDF(S) namespaces may not be required.

ACTION: Dan Brickley will own the "container problem". Ora Lassila will help.

Face-to-Face Meeting

W3C procedure requires 8 weeks notice for a face-to-face meeting.
RESOLVED: We'll meet August 1 and 2 in conjunction with the
International Semantic Web Workshop (SWWS)
at Stanford.
ACTION (various): Contact Brian McBride and Dan Brickley if your organization
has a facility in the Bay Area that would be willing to host a meeting of
20-25 people.

Issue Ownership

Brian asked for volunteers to "own" (analyze and write-up a suggested fix)
items on the
issues list: